UNVAILING AN IMPOSTOR.
Margaret stole to her chamber and bolted the door, and leaned her dizzy
head upon her hand.
Gradually the first surprise of her mind gave way before a dreadful
despondency, and she revolved the revelation in ever increasing alarm.
"He is cleverer than I am," she assured herself, "and he will most
likely win the contest. He has come out of a past which I shall never be
able to trace to personate St. Udo Brand, and his resemblance is the
weakest instrument he uses. He has appeared like a horrible phantom in
St. Udo's guise, and he defies me to tear his mask from him. He is no
mere adventurer who has traded upon an accidental likeness to Colonel
Brand and stepped into his shoes upon the day of his death--he is a
deliberate scoundrel who probably was arranging his plot upon the night
on which he came from Regis with Captain Brand's letter. He has waited
for St. Udo's death to step into his place and enact his life from the
point where he laid it down on the battle-field. Has he anything to do
with the sudden end of that life? Has he murdered St. Udo Brand? Great
Heaven! am I to unvail an impostor and find an assassin in this man?"
She clenched her hands, and faithful memory brought back the vision of
the dying hero, upon his pulseless horse, and she heeded it now, though
she had sternly repressed all belief of it before.
"Is Mortlake the crawling demon who crouched over the brave colonel in
the dark and stabbed him? Have I met him first upon the steps of Castle
Brand--second in my vision of St. Udo's death, and last in my
treacherous lover of to-night? Oh, my heart! is St. Udo really dead
then, and by his hand! The grand lion-hearted king, by the hand of a
fawning slave?"
Wild with horror, she shuddered at the dark chasm she beheld yawning in
her way, but not for a moment did she shrink from the tortuous path
which led to that abyss--the path of inexorable pursuit which ended not
until the man was hunted down and unmasked.
She waited until she was calm, and then she wrote her letter to the two
executors, which was to expose the man who stood in St. Udo's position,
well knowing the dangers of the path she had chosen, and accepting her
chances without fear:
"CASTLE BRAND.
"DEAR SIRS: This is the second appeal I make to you on behalf
of the true disposition of Mrs. Brand's property. If this
appeal is unheeded, I will take the case in my own hands, and
pursue it to the end, whatever that end may be; and if I die
before I succeed, God will hold you responsible for my death.
"The man who calls himself Colonel St. Udo Brand came here
to-night according to appointment, and took the first step
against me, and for the possession of Seven-Oak Waaste, by
proposing for my hand.
"Believing him to be an imposter, I declined giving him a
decided answer, and bade him wait for one month. In other words
(and he perfectly understood it), I demanded a month in which
to discover the proofs of his villany.
"He accepted my fiat, but with great reluctance because he felt
his position so unsafe, before my marriage or death, that he
feared thirty day's delay might ruin it.
"At the moment of our parting, a sudden rush of memory revealed
to me the true personality of the pseudo Colonel Brand.
"I beg of you to weigh this communication well, and not to put
it down as you have put down my convictions before.
"On the night of Madam Brand's death, you remember that Captain
Brand, in his fatal carelessness, came as far as Regis to see
his grandmother, and staid there, sending a note of excuse to
me by a messenger. This messenger gave his name as Roland
Mortlake, and stood waiting at the foot of the steps while I
read the note.
"Mark me here! This man was so like the Brand's, that Purcell,
the steward, advanced to meet him, saying:
"'Welcome to the castle, captain!'
"He explained that he was not the captain, but the captain's
messenger, and he stood by all the time I was communicating the
contents of the letter to Purcell. He was so close to us, that
he must have heard all that passed. Under this belief, I turned
suddenly to him and told him to go instantly for Captain Brand,
and to tell him that the will must be changed, or he would be
ruined.
"His crafty, eager look so arrested me, that I gazed fixedly in
his face for some minutes; and it seemed to me that I
discovered a crime-stained and guileful soul in his eyes for
they haunted me long afterward.
"And I distinctly remember the words of the man who had
accompanied him, as he rode away under the trees:
"'_Gardez-tu_, my friend! You English take great news sourly.
_Ma foi!_ you curse Mademoiselle Fortune herself when she
smiles upon you the blandest!'
"I heeded these words not all then. I recalled them one by one
to-night from the hidden chamber of memory, and I protest that
they hold their own significance in that daring plot.
"Do you read nothing in this reminiscence beyond a woman's idle
vagaries of fancy?
"Will you believe it--only, that when I swear that the man,
Roland Mortlake, who stood on the castle-steps with me that
night, and the man, St. Udo Brand, who stood with me on the
castle-steps to-night, are one?
"I call upon you, in the interests of justice, to find the
proofs of this infamous imposture.
"I appeal to you, that you may do your duty by the dead and
unveil a monster of crime. What has Mortlake done with St. Udo
Brand?
"Perhaps he has murdered him. Will you let a possible murderer
escape you because a woman points him out? How do we know that
the news of his being killed in battle was not true? And, being
true, how do we know that Mortlake's hand was not the hand that
destroyed the heir of Castle Brand?
"How do we know that this plot, if sifted well, would not
reveal in the suitor you sent me to-night a red-handed
assassin?
"Come to me in the morning and tell me what you are going to
do. If you are going to do nothing, then I will carry on the
contest alone, and trace the history of Roland Mortlake from
the bottom step of Castle Brand, where I saw him first, pace by
pace, to the foot of the gallows, where I shall see him last.
"Yours Respectfully,
"MARGARET WALSINGHAM.
"TO MESSRS DAVENPORT & GAY."
Late as it was she rang for the housekeeper, and gave orders that her
letter should be conveyed to the lawyer's house that night.
"Tell Symonds to give it to Mr. Davenport himself, and to trust it to no
one else," she said.
The housekeeper met the feverish flash of her young mistress' eyes, and
took the envelope from her hand with much uneasiness.
"My poor dear, you ar'nt strong enough for all this worrying and
wearing," she observed, sympathetically. "I wish for your sake, deary,
the colonel had lain quiet in his grave."
Margaret drew back with a sudden storm of grief, and shut the door, Mrs.
Chetwode went down stairs, sorrowfully vowing to herself that Miss
Margaret would pine to death before she wore the colonel's wedding-ring.
"He lies quiet enough in his shallow grave," moaned Margaret; "noble,
proud St. Udo! Oh my heart; why was I doomed to be the Marplot of his
life? He was so haughty in his abhorrence of low scheming--so constant
in his love--so tender with his dying Vermont boys--so heroic, and so
reckless of his own grand life that I love him. _I love him!_ And he is
dead!"
She wrung her hands and wept such tears as make the heart grow old, and
the life wane early; such tears as are only rendered by a nature
generous and effulgent in its love as tropical sunshine, whose revenge
is self-immolating as the suttee of the Hindoo's widow.
Toward ten o'clock the next morning the executors made their appearance
in a gig, and betook themselves to the library.
They found their troublesome ward already waiting them, with an
expression of nervous defiance on her face, as if she fully expected a
sound berating from each of them.
Dr. Gay looked at her anxiously, and shook his head over his own
thoughts.
Mr. Davenport coughed sarcastically, and frowned to hide the effect
which her blanched cheeks made upon him.
"I'm sorry to have called you out too early to begin the search," said
Margaret, bitterly.
"Too early? by no means, my dear," cried the doctor, seating himself
cozily near her; "it's never to early to do what's right. Now we're all
ready to hear what you have got to say."
"I have told you surely enough in my letter for you to act upon," she
answered, "without having to say any more. What do you say of the
declaration I have made as to the man's identity?"
"Most startling!" said the physician, in a quiet tone, as if it was
really not startling at all.
"What have you to say of it?" she demanded of the lawyer, with an
anxious look at his impenetrable countenance.
"Consider the absurdity of your suspicions," broke in Davenport, "the
childishness and impossibility of your premises. How could an imposter
act out St. Udo Brand's history? How could he know Colonel Brand's most
private affairs, and his friends, and write with his hand, and have the
same appearance, and cheat everybody--we among the rest, who saw him
when he was a boy as often as I have fingers and toes? Oh, Miss
Walsingham!"
"You wish me to marry Mortlake, do you?" she asked, with scorn.
"For Heaven's sake don't call him that!" ejaculated Davenport. "If you
call him that and he hears it, the Brand spirit will be very quiet for
the first time if he doesn't end the slander in murder."
"It began in murder," retorted she, "that would be the fittest end,
after all. But do not fear; I shall not alarm your colonel without
proper cause. You really expect me to treat him as if he was St. Udo
Brand?"
"Yes, until you have proofs to the contrary."
She sat with folded hands and pondered. An ashy pallor overspread her
face. A mental gag was forced between her teeth; a mental rope was
placed for her across a yawning chasm, and selfish hands were pushing
her toward it, and selfish voices were urging her to cross alone.
"Very well," she breathed firmly, "I will bring you proofs that you will
not venture to discredit. When I send for you again, come as promptly as
you did to-day."
The executors were forced to depart with this arrangement, and rode back
to Regis deep in discussion relating to their ward's sanity.
How long Margaret sat alone in the library she could not tell--an
ominous foretaste of the grim future had shrouded her soul, and the dark
hours passed unheeded by. When she roused herself, it was to instant
action.
She sat down before her desk and began to write a letter--her third
appeal for help.
She wrote but one passionate sentence, then her head sank between her
hands.
"Who knows whether I shall live until it could be answered?" she moaned.
Bethinking herself, she tore the sheet and cast it into the heart of the
fire, and took a new sheet; dashed off again but one sentence, signed
her name, thrust it into an envelope, hurriedly sealing it, as if she
feared her mind might change at any moment.
It was a telegram and ran thus:
"LADY JULIANA DUCIE:--Come at once to Castle Brand on a matter
of life and death.
"MARGARET WALSINGHAM."
Then she dressed herself and drove down to Regis in the carriage,
clutching the dispatch in her hand, and drawing back from view whenever
she passed a wayfarer, trembling lest her enemy should detect her in
this move against his safety.
After an hour of feverish impatience, an answer came which satisfied
her.
"I will come to-morrow night.
"LADY J. DUCIE."
She went out to her carriage with a triumphant air: she felt that she
was one move ahead of the colonel.
"Lady Juliana shall strip him of his disguise," she thought, "and the
executors shall be present to see the exposure."
She stopped before Mr. Davenport's office, wrote a line on her card
requesting that he and Dr. Gay would come to the castle the following
evening about seven o'clock, and then she hurried home.
The next day passed with the anxious girl slowly enough; as the evening
drew on, which she hoped would be the last of her enemy's imposture, her
excitement became terrible; she was in that stage of over-strained
endurance in which a triviality turns the brain.
She told the housekeeper to have a bedchamber prepared for a lady
visitor, and heedless of her exclamations of wonder, directed her to
send Symonds at a quarter to six to the railway station with the
carriage, and to take whatever strangers were for the castle as secretly
home as possible, so that no one in the village should know who they
were.
"Lawk-a-mercy!" ejaculated Mrs. Chetwode, "what's Seven Oak a coming to!
A body would think you was going to hide away a murderer, Miss Margaret
dear."
"Not to hide away a murderer, but to discover one!" muttered the girl,
turning from the colloquy.
She had two hours to wait for the coming of Lady Juliana, and she must
live through the dreary time somehow, so, weary of the silence of the
castle, she flung a large dark mantle about her, and went out for a walk
upon the Waaste.
It was nearing the shortest day of the year, and the early twilight was
already setting over the distant hill and forest.
The dun leaves, heaped high under the oaks of the front park, were white
with hoary frost, crackled like paper under her feet, and, starting with
every sound, she soon quitted the shadows of the trees, and paced over
the sere turf down to the inky mere, where the long, brown flags pricked
up in paper-like spikes, and the dank rushes pierced the filmy ices at
the margin of the water, and the hazel shrubs clustered close about the
slippery banks, and hid them from the Waaste.
She walked round and round in this dreary spot, while the dusk grew
darker, and the frost fell whiter on her foot-prints; and, when fatigue
began to demand rest, she chose a seat on the gnarled root of a giant
willow, whose branches swept the ground on every side, or dipped into
the mere at her feet.
She became completely absorbed in her thoughts, but presently a distant
pattering, like rain upon the dry foliage, recalled her, with a
disagreeable start.
She opened the branches of her yellow-leaf screen and looked about.
Nearer came the pattering steps, slow and soft; then she heard a long
sniff, and a swifter pattering of the coming feet.
Her heart stood still with horror.
She saw a long, lean blood-hound leap into view, and circle slowly round
the mere, his nose on the ground, his blood-shot eyes flaming through
the dusk.
_The colonel's sleuth-hound tracking her steps!_
With what helpless fascination she watched the animal gliding like a
phantom round and round, down to the lip of the mere, where she had bent
to pluck a stalk, diverging a pace when she had diverged.
And behind the dog came Colonel Brand, with hands clasping each other by
the wrists, and drooping figure, and head down on his breast, shuffling
his dragging feet among the withered gorse as if weights held them down
brooding along with the heavy and spiritless gait of an old man, or of
one whose shoulders have been bowed thus by labor.
He looked not to right or left, but slouched on after his dog upon the
bank, and, as he passed the woman in her hiding place, she saw that in
his face, which no Brand of knightly English blood ever wore, since Sir
Hildebrand broke his lance at Cressy.
That crafty and sinister half smile, that green, scintillating shimmer
of the introverted eye, that gathered brow, seamed with the hideous
lines of crime and cunning!
Could such a face belong to St. Udo, the dare-man and dare-devil? That
coward's shuffle, and murderous, nervous hand clutching the empty air,
or thrust into his bosom! Could such belong to the gallant soldier who
had stormed the Rocky Ridge, and braved the cannon's mouth in the
thickest of the fight? Thank Heaven, no! He lay in his hidden grave, and
his bravery was glowing in the mouths of a hundred heroes, and his honor
should be kept untarnished, if a woman's hand could uphold the proud
escutcheon!
Closer stole the blood hound to the willow tree, but though she eyed his
approach with curling blood, she would not utter a cry which might
betray her to the man she hated.
For the nervous hand he had thrust into his bosom had brought out
something which glittered with a steel-blue flash in the indistinct
gloom, and he had come to a dead stand with it, and was looking at it
with the glare of a hungry wolf.
He was but a few paces from Margaret Walsingham, and the sleuth-hound
was gliding on her track, making his last circle round the mere. She
knew it by his glaring eyes and watering fangs, and his short, deep
groans of eagerness.
"I must have recourse to you again, my tiny talisman?" hissed Colonel
Brand to his stiletto. "She insists on having you, and I am going to
humor her."
He hissed these words through his teeth slowly, deliberately, as if it
was a sort of joy to utter them aloud, but once, and then he thrust it
into his bosom again.
And the woman tore off her heavy cloak and dropped it beneath the willow
tree, and, rising to her feet, she glided through the hazel copse across
the Waaste, and fled for her life, just when the snarling hound sprang
upon her garment and tore it into pieces, with many a wolfish bay!